To:MAXIM GORKY

Published:First published in 1924.

      Sent from Geneva to the Isle of Capri (Italy).

      Printed from the original.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,1974,

      Moscow,Volume 34,

      pages385-386.Translated:Clemens DuttTranscription\Markup:D. MorosPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive

      (2005).You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

Ithink that some of the questions you raise about our
differences of opinion are a sheer misunderstanding. Never,
of course, have I thought of “chasing away the intelligentsia”, as the silly syndicalists do, or of denying its necessity for the workers’ movement. There can be no divergence
between us on any ofthesequestions; of that I am quite
sure, and since we cannot get together at the moment, we
must start work together at once. At work we shall best
of all find a common language.

Iam very, very pleased with your plan of writing short
paragraphs forProletary(the announcement has been sent
to you). Naturally, if you are working on something big,do not break it off.

RegardingTrotsky, I wanted to reply last time, but I
forgot. We (i.e., the editorial board ofProletary, Al. Al.,
myself and “Inok”—a very good colleague from the home
Bolsheviks) decided straight away to invite him on toProletary. We wrote him a letter, proposing and outlining
a theme.By general agreementwe signed it the “Editorial
Board ofProletary”, so as to put the matter on a more
collegial footing (I personally, for example, had had a
big fight with Trotsky, a regular fierce battle in 1903-05
when he was a Menshevik). Whether there was something
in the form of our letter that offended Trotsky, I do not
know, but he sent us a letter, not written by him: “On
Comrade Trotsky’s instructions” the editorial board ofProletarywas informed that he refused to write, he was too.
busy.

Inmy opinion, this is mere posturing. At the London
Congress,[1]too, he acted
theposeur. I don’t know really whether he will
go with the Bolsheviks....

TheMensheviks here have issued an announcement about the monthlyGolos
Sotsial-Demokrata[2]over the signatures of Plekhanov, Axelrod,
Dan, Martov and Martynov. I shall get it and send it to you. The struggle may
become sharper. But Trotsky wants to stand “above the contending factions”....

Itis in regard to materialism as a world outlook that I think I disagree with
you in substance. Not the “materialist conception of history” (our
“empirios”[3]do not deny that), but philosophical
materialism. That the Anglo-Saxons and Germans owed their philistinism to
“materialism”, and the Romance peoples their anarchism, is something
I emphatic ally dispute. Materialism, as a philosophy, waseverywhere pushed
into the backgroundby them.Neue Zeit, that most sober and
well-informed organ, is indifferent to philosophy, was never a zealous supporter
of philosophical materialism, and of late has been publishing the
empirio-critics without a single reservation. It is wrong, absolutely wrong to
think that dead philistinism could be deduced from the materialism which Marx
and Engels taught! All the philistine trends in Social-Democracy are most of
all at war with philosophical materialism, they lean towards Kant,
neo-Kantianism, the critical philosophy. No, the philosophy which Engels
substantiated inAnti-Dühringkeeps philistinism at arm’s
length. Plekhanov does harm to this philosophy by linking the struggleherewith the factional struggle, but after all no Russian
Social-Democrat ought to confuse the present Plekhanov with the old Plekhanov.

Al.Al. has just now left me. I shall communicate with him again about the
“meeting”. If you insist—it could be arranged for a couple of
days and very soon at that.

Allthe best.Lenin

[1]TheFifth Congress of the R.S.D.L.P.was held in London on
April 30–May 19 (May 13–June 1), 1907. It was attended by 336
delegates, of whom 105 were Bolsheviks, 97 Mensheviks, 57 Bundists, 44
Polish Social-Democrats, 29 Lettish Social-Democrats and 4
non-factionalists. The Poles and Letts supported the Bolsheviks, who
had a solid majority at the Congress. One of the main questions
discussed was that of the attitude to the bourgeois parties. Lenin
delivered the report on this question. On all fundamental issues the
Congress adopted Bolshevik resolutions. A Central Committee was
elected consisting of 5 Bolsheviks, 4 Mensheviks, 2 Polish and 1
Lettish Social-Democrats. Among the alternate members elected to the
C.C. were 10 Bolsheviks, 7 Mensheviks, 3 Polish and 2 Lettish
Social-Democrats.

TheFifth Congress of the R.S.D.L.P. marked the victory of Bolshevism
in the Russian working-class movement. The decisions of the Congress
summed up the struggle of the Bolsheviks against the opportunist,
Menshevik wing of the Party in the period of the bourgeois-democratic
revolution. The Bolsheviks’ tactics were approved by the Congress and
accepted as the tactics of the whole Party.

[2]GolosSotsial-Democrata(Voice of a Social-Democrat)—a
newspaper, the organ of the Mensheviks, published from February 1908
to December 1911, first in Geneva, thon in Paris. The newspaper coming
out in open support of the liquidators, Plekhanov resigned from the
editorial board in May 1909, after which the paper took definite shape
as the ideological centre of the liquidators.

[3]Leninis referring to the group of empirio-critics and
empirio-monists, adherents of the reactionary idealist philosophy of
Mach and Avenarius, namely, Bogdanov, Bazarov and Lunacharsky.